~ simply feisty seeds

The Moth Snowstorm

I have complicated feelings for The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy a book about nature and joy with some memoir thrown in. The writing is solid and well-paced, McCarthy definitely has a passion for the natural world, especially birds and butterflies. But while he can wax rhapsodic about the beauty of a marsh and the birdlife it supports, he is a rather curmudgeonly individual.

The hardest part about his surliness is that he is writing a book about joy and advocating that it is the joy we feel in nature that needs to be cultivated and turned into a movement; that it is joy that will save the planet:

What I mean is, it is time for a different, formal defence of nature. We should offer up not just the notion of being sensible and responsible about it, which is sustainable development, nor the notion of its mammoth utilitarian and financial values, which is ecosystem services, but a third way, something different entirely: we should offer up what it means to our spirits; the love of it. We should offer up its joy.

What McCarthy means by joy is this:

occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy.

In spite of his passion and is argument for joy, the book is not exactly joyful. It’s a difficult thing to do, write about nature and the destruction of species and ecosystems and still somehow manage to inspire joy. I am not entirely certain anyone could pull it off even someone like Wendell Berry, Richard Mabey, and Robert Macfarlane would have a tough time. But while they might leave me feeling sad about the state of things, at the same time they inspire me, make me want to act and in the acting experience nature and joy. McCarthy, he only made me sad.

The title of the book refers to a time when there was such an abundance of insects that sometimes while driving at night there would be so many moths attracted to the car headlights it looked like a snowstorm. I have never seen a moth snowstorm but I know exactly what he is talking about. During my childhood family vacations meant packing up the camper and driving to state and national parks. Every time we’d arrive and settle down into our camping spot for the duration, I was both fascinated and disgusted by the insects that met their end on the front grill of the truck. And there were a lot of them. I never really thought much about it, but by the time I entered my teens, there were significantly fewer insects smashed on the grill.

The point McCarthy is making, of course, is that the lack of insects is a kind of canary in the coal mine. It is evidence of just how much we have lost already and a warning of how much more we are on the verge of losing. Because all those insects have important jobs. Even if they give you the creepy crawlies, insects run the world. We need them for pollination — bees are not the only pollinators — for breaking down organic materials into soil with nutrients our plants can use, and for myriad other things not least of all feeding other animals — birds, bats, small mammals, even humans.

My dissatisfaction with McCarthy is how and where he decides to cast the blame. He announces sustainable development is a blanket failure. Well, no it is not. It is very much a failure in places like the UK and US where companies that call themselves green really aren’t and where the idea of sustainable seems to mean ten to twenty years rather than generations. This is not the fault of sustainable development but of policy and politicians and corporations.

And all those disappearing insects, their demise is laid at the feet of “Farmer Giles.” McCarthy rips into agricultural practices, from pesticide use to fertilizer and it is all because of Farmer Giles. He doesn’t once stop to question the government and farm policy or the corporations that Farmer Giles is likely to be working for. He doesn’t ask how or why it is Farmer Giles does the things he does. Nor does he look at his own complicity in the situation. It is all the fault of farmers, period.

And, as if that weren’t enough, in this book on the joy of nature, he declares liberal secular humanism has also been a failure, but not for why you might think:

This creed, which has held sway since the Second World War, has a single, honorable aim: to advance human welfare. It wants people everywhere to be free from hunger and fear and disease, and in so far as possible, to be happy and live fulfilled lives. It is principled and upright. It is admirable. But there is a gap at its core: the failure to acknowledge that humans are not necessarily good. Still less does it admit that, more, there may be something intrinsically troubling about humans as a species: that Homo sapiens may be earth’s problem child.

Just let that soak in for a minute.

There are parts of what he says that are undeniable. Humans aren’t necessarily good (but they aren’t necessarily bad either). But the point of liberal secular humanism is to create a society that encourages and supports the good. And, while it has done a lot of positive things in the world, it has not been a resounding success either. But then neither has any other human belief system other than greed and self-interest. So, yeah, humans do currently present a problem for the earth.

McCarthy’s solution of joy seems rather paltry in the end. But the thing is, I agree with him. I do think we need to cultivate joy in nature. I think the more people who have the opportunity to feel that joy, the more people will be willing to stand up and say no to oil pipelines, no to marshes being drained and turned into housing developments, no to rain forests being burned down for palm oil farms or cattle ranching. I agree with him when he says:

that the natural world can bring us peace…; that nature is not an extra, a luxury, but on the contrary is indispensable, part of our essence. And now that knowledge needs to be brought to nature’s defence.

Unfortunately McCarthy offers no suggestions for how joy in nature might be encouraged. He speaks repeatedly of making joy into a kind of belief system but he doesn’t say how one might go about that or what it could possibly look like. He’s spent a whole book making his argument for joy and then just leaves it there, “here is what will fix things, now all of you go figure it out.”

So you can see why my feelings about this book are complicated. McCarthy’s writing on nature and the environment have won awards and clearly he cares. I have not read anything else by him. Perhaps his other work is less surly and does better at acknowledging the complexities of the issues, I hope it does. The Moth Snowstorm, however, is too full of flaws for me to be able to say that it succeeds in what is sets out to do.

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21 thoughts on “The Moth Snowstorm”

Hm. It sounds like a book I would really want to read, even if the attitude and solutions presented can be problematic… I think I know what you mean about the insects. I remember as a kid doing road trips w/the family and at rest stops or gas refills my dad would have to scrape insects off the windshield. He sometimes joked that if we were hungry we could add them to our sandwiches for extra protein! I just thought that was gross.

I have never noticed before, but I don’t need to scrape any off at all- it’s never enough to obscure the vision. Which is oddly, alarmingly sad.

Jeane, yes, I think it is one you would like to read in spite of everything. Yes! That is it exactly with the insects! I’ve noticed it but never stopped to think about the implications until now and it’s rather chilling.

He sounds like a pessimist, one of those everything-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket sorts of people OR maybe he’s being purposefully adversarial to get people responding (though somehow I doubt it from your description).

I mean, blaming the poor farmers. It’s always easy to point the blame somewhere else but in the end it’s us consumers who want cheap food. And then I feel guilty saying that I’m happy to pay more for my food because I can afford it. Others can’t, and they aren’t always in a position to grow it either if they live in cheap apartments.

In other words, there are no easy answers and to lay simple blame sets us all back really.

whisperinggums, hehe, yeah he definitely has pessimism covered! When he started blaming the farmers for everything I almost started yelling at the book which would have been really alarming for Bookman sitting in bed quietly reading next to me! So I kept my remarks to myself. With so m any complex issues involved there definitely is no easy answer and no one group to pin the blame on.

Yikes! He sounds like one of those “kill off all the humans and the earth will be renewed” extremists.
Joy in nature, like anything else, can be taught. I tried to make sure my kids had time outside with nothing in particular to do. As they got older and busier (middle school age) that got more difficult, but my daughter had a rabbit and I required them to spend at least 20 minutes each day letting the rabbit hop around outside. This got the kids out, too.

Oh, I started thinking about the rabbit and forgot the other part of my comment, which is that I remember when fireflies (we called them lightning bugs) were much more common and flew around in greater numbers. I thought maybe there were more of them in the south, but it turns out that the northern lawns around here often have chemicals they don’t like. They still rise at dusk in my yard, at least.

Perhaps a sort of misanthropy does go with a certain brand of nature writing- for understandable reasons. He seems so right about our blindness to catastrophe- so true that insects are so less abundant. It is a pity that the implications about human nature he emphasises would lead readers to despair.

Ian, perhaps it does. It certainly is difficult to keep your faith in humanity when you take a hard look at all the destruction. The disappearing insects are easy to not notice and some people are probably glad about it. But it is a terrible thing and an indicator of bigger and worse things to come.

Jeanne, he doesn’t go so far to say it, but I suspect in his darkest moments he has thought about it plenty. Joy in nature can definitely be taught, I agree. Caring for an animal definitely goes a long way in teaching it. And fireflies, yes! I’ve never seen any in the city here, but I used to see them all the time out on the fringes of the suburbs and now those fringes have gotten much farther away and it’s been ages since I have seen any fireflies and when I think about it, it makes me sad. I am glad to hear they still find a home in your yard!

A disappointed and disillusioned view, but our failures to act to benefit the environment and future generations can be depressing. What we need is cheer leading, ways to make a difference even if small in our own lives, and lists of people to contact to hopefully make larger differences. We do need occasional shock treatment, though, to remind us of what is being lost.

jenclair, I agree, there is a time and place for shock treatment, but cheerleading is probably more effective for most people especially when it comes with helpful information on how to go about making changes.

The way you’ve described this reminds me of an interview to which I listened about five years ago, by a curmudgeonly British nature writer, who held similar views to those you’ve described here. There were so many moments of connection in the content of his conversation, but ultimately I was just so overwhelmingly saddened by the entire experience that I couldn’t bring myself to follow up with his book, even though I agreed with nearly everything that he was saying (as unpalatable as much of it was). I guess we have to find our own lines, in terms of what galvanizes us and what paralyzes us. Sigh.

buried, McCarthy is British so it is entirely possible it was him you heard! For all of his talk of joy and descriptions of his own joyful experiences, it all was tinged with a kind of sadness and a sense that joy was disappearing and he maybe couldn’t do anything about it.

He sounds like a man of ‘a certain age’!
I don’t think you can go by the amount of beasties plastered to the car windscreen nowadays as car designers have done their best to have curves at the front that allow the air to push bugs over the top of the car unharmed. As a non driver I can keep an eye on what is happening as we drive along.

pining, hehe, he described himself as a Baby Boomer who came of age in the 60s. Interesting about the car companies, I did not know they had done that! But then I don;t take long drives anymore, long bike rides though and I do encounter bugs and have ingested enough gnats that I wonder if I can call myself a vegan anymore 🙂

If I can impress but two things upon my child as he grows, it will be the importance of kindness towards others, and the beauty and joy of the natural world – and our connection with it! (I hope! I’m trying!)

Sorry this one was disappointing, but it sounds like you mined some gems from it anyway.

That is so true about the insects! Like you, I remember when we took long car trips to Mexico and our car was always a mess. I hadn’t thought about that at all. I wish this had been a better read for you.

This one caught my eye (literally I love the cover illustration), but maybe I will just enjoy your review of it and pass on reading it myself. It’s too bad a book that is about the joy of nature should be a book you write about with reservations! Of course all things considered and the future of the world, maybe his surliness is not entirely misplaced.

Danielle, the cover is definitely eye-catching. If you are interested in reading it don;t let me stop you! Just don’t expect it to be a Roger Deakin kind of book. It has zero romanticism, which is maybe a good thing to be realistic, but I don’t think realism and joy are mutually exclusive.